WOW YEAH

work by Yaismel Alba Garib

March 2 – 31, 2024

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, March 2nd
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of Yaismel Alba Garib’s solo exhibition, WOW YEAH. 

Far from Cuba. Always on the edge. Expecting. Surviving. A catfish on the shore. I no longer feel the entrance to my hometown, nor the nights with those who stayed. Self exile. Exhaust. To play every day in a BDSM room. Everything passes, and only the painting remains. The walls, on which murals and photos of the murderers once stood, are now torn down. On the surfaces, there are paintings. Affirmations. Cuba before the disaster. Future. Paradiso by Jose Lezama Lima. Everything comes together in Chicago. Comfort Station welcomes me. The space is a bedroom. Sex. Pain. Calm. Where distance produces innocence. Where false identity is assumed to see images that excite you. And the WOW and the YEAH blend together as the paint settles and the cum shoots out.

Born in Cuba, Yaismel Alba Garib is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Chicago. His artistic journey explores the complex interplay between nothingness and somethingness, navigating the realms of completeness and emptiness. Exhibiting a penchant for performance art and painting, his work has been showcased in various notable exhibitions.

In 2022, Smooth and painful and Emptiness is completeness were featured at Fracas Art Gallery and the Graduate Exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, respectively. The previous year, Garib’s work engaged audiences with Loving Cuba and The life I give at Tangential Unspace Art Lab and Old Ways New Tools at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exploration of physicality continued in 2020 with Is my body strong enough to hold a rebar? presented at Tangential Unspace Art Lab. His international presence is marked by the inclusion of El acto de destrucción es un acto de salvación at the XIII Havana Biennal in 2019 and Critical Control Point at Jose Marti Park in Miami in 2018.

Yaismel’s artistic evolution is rooted in education, having pursued an MFA in Studio Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2020 to 2022. Prior to this, he earned a BFA in Theater Studies from the University of Arts (ISA) in Havana, Cuba, spanning from 2010 to 2015. His work is a testament to the constant transition between familiar completeness and elusive emptiness, embodying a moment that resides in perpetual flux, taking from and giving back to the world. 

@_yaismel

Learn about
Prisoners Defenders

Ephemeral Echoes

work by Sangwoo Yoo

April 6 – 28, 2024

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, April 6th
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of Sangwoo Yoo’s solo exhibition, Ephemeral Echoes. 

Sangwoo Yoo creates art with the intention of reawakening the dulled senses of contemporary subjects. While working as an archaeologist, he was drawn to objects imbued with static temporal weight. However, the social reality around him seemed simultaneously oversaturated and depleted, marked by rapid and chaotic changes. Yoo believes that this aggressive society can lead people to lose their cool-headedness and be numbed, which is why they aim to reconnect their lost senses through their art. For instance, in ‘Portrait of Loss’, Sangwoo transformed a discarded Christmas tree into dust with its natural pine scent, creating an olfactory experience that demonstrates the feeling of loss.

In terms of material use, Yoo explores how material can have an ecological cycle, focusing on embracing ephemerality and leaving behind a minimal environmental footprint. Moving forward, he aims to create art that makes a practical contribution to society and the environment and sparks a reaction. Sangwoo views his art as a tool to inspire change and help people regain their senses and connect with their environment.

Sangwoo Yoo, born in Seoul in 1994, is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculpture and installation. His practice merges his fascination with nature and archaeology. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) from the University of Seoul in Korea and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the United States.

Sangwoo has held solo exhibitions at several galleries, including SITE Gallery in Chicago, Dos Gallery, and Red Brick Gallery in Seoul, as well as group exhibitions at Hiestand Gallery in Oxford, Comfort Station in Chicago, KEPCO Art Center, TRAART, and COSA Gallery in Seoul. Notably, Sang Woo was the recipient of the 2024 MASS MOCA Residency Fellowship, fully sponsored by SAIC, won the second-place award in the 2023 Miami University Young Sculptors Competition, and was the grand prize winner of the Hoguk Art Exhibition in Korea in 2016. His works have been displayed in renowned locations such as The War Memorial of Korea, the United Nations Peace Memorial Hall in Busan, the Yanggu Humanities Museum, and the ChunCheon National Museum in Gangwon. One of his pieces is currently part of the collection at The War Memorial of Korea in Seoul.

@ sangwooyoo_

Related Programming and Events

Art After Hours 
Saturday, April 12
5 - 8 P 

Al-Atlal الأطلال

work by Sayeda Misa Sourour

May 4 – 26, 2024

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, May 4th
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of Sayeda Misa Sourour’s solo exhibition, Al-Atlal الأطلال. 

A place of gathering, now left folded and still.

I was no longer tripping on piles of shib shibs in the doorway

Or smothered with hugs, kisses and cheek pinches.

An abundance of simultaneous laughter, yelling, children crying, and Al Jazeera reports

Now replaced with the subtle whispers of leftover tinsel from Ramadan past off the balcony. 

As prayer calls echo, it occurred to me that the revolution would mark my last taste of molokhia. 

"Al-Atlal الأطلال”, which translates to “The Ruins”,  is an exhibition that features redefined prayer rugs and various iterations referencing the monobloc chair. The work is a reflection of the material relationship of the interior and exterior domestic spaces of Sourour's upbringing in Cairo, Egypt. Grappling with themes of loss, both personal and the collective grief felt throughout the Middle East due to occupation, genocide and colonial imperialism. The viewer is invited into a space that accents ordinary characteristics of Arab lifestyle. Yet, despite the dehumanization and trauma that is imposed with being Arab there's a resilience rooted in the heart that endures an unyielding resistance.

Sayeda Misa Sourour is an Egyptian interdisciplinary artist from New Jersey, currently based in Chicago, Illinois. 

With an emphasis on woodworking, Sourour’s art practices traverse sculpture, installation, and performance. Inspired by her Middle Eastern and Western upbringing, she carefully selects, alters and combines culturally relevant objects to evoke uncanny sensory narratives. Though geometric, arabesque and post-modern designs, Sourour crafts the absences of human form while embodying the presence of spirit. 

@spaghettilegz_

Related Events –

Extra Comfort – Songs of Liberation
Friday, May 17th @ 7 P

Acoustic set of songs written about love, mental health, and liberation by Israa Darwich, a Lebanese singer- songwriter from metro Detroit, Michigan.

certain places

work by Zulkhairi Zulkiflee and Sheldon Till–Campbell

June 1 – 30, 2024

Saturday viewings, hosted by artists
June 15, 22, 29
11a – 4p

on view Sundays
11a – 2p

Opening Reception

Saturday, June 1st
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of Zulkhairi Zulkiflee and Sheldon Till–Campbell’s exhibition, certain places. 

In negotiating a sense of place, Zulkhairi and Sheldon navigate imaginary terrains through the interface of the formal and pictorial, where landscapes are in constant motion.

Sheldon’s analysis of the Midwest oscillates between attentive presence and abstract detachment. Often his formal explorations resonate with the Regionalist tradition in American art, where he attempts to complicate and expand the existing visual shorthand for the region. His work calibrates a vision that grows out of his Midwestern upbringing, an approach that is simultaneously invested, critical, and uncertain. Through attention and slowness, Sheldon’s explorations generate a quiet space that hovers between desire and dislocation. 

In Zulkhairi’s current exploration, he attempts to make sense of relocation and negotiate a new sense of place. Through the search for familiarity, he seeks company in historical knowledge like the Java Village from the World Columbian Exposition. In this process, Zulkhairi introduces pavilion-shelters as a conceptual conduit to notions of rest and storytelling, in particular, the concept of 'world' — a confabulatory framework devised by the artist and derived from a Singaporean-Malay slang used in bilingual speech of World English variety.

Zulkhairi Zulkiflee (b. 1991, Singapore) is an artist-curator committed to exploring Malay identity and its social ontology. His lens-based artworks unpack such structures in relation to local and global contexts, particularly through the racialized body as a conduit. Previous exhibitions include SG Contemporary, Gajah Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia (2023); Der Greif: Past & Present, Munich, Germany (2023); Vantage Point Sharjah 10, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2022) and Expo 2020, The Singapore Pavilion, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2022). Zulkhairi was a recipient of the IMPART Awards (2020), the Objectifs’ Curator Open Call (2019), and recently, The Fulbright Student Award for graduate studies in the U.S.

@llzhzg

Sheldon Till-Campbell (b.1993) is a Chicago-based artist whose work uses landscape, conversation, and drawing-based drift as tools to question how we inhabit. Sheldon grew up homeschooled in Kansas City, MO, and has a particular interest in the American Midwest as a regional identity and context. He has participated in numerous exhibitions including Heartland, Dream Clinic, Columbus, Ohio (2024); Communidad/Identidad, Walford Galleries, Wheaton, Illinois and Miniprint, Oaxaca, Mexico (2022); INT’L Paperworks, Minot State University.

@sheldontillcampbell

Flags, Food and Faith

work by Jonathan Michael Castillo

July 6 – 28, 2024

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, July 6th
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of Jonathan Michael Castillo’s solo exhibition – Flags, Food and Faith. 

Flags, Food and Faith is a collection of photographs made primarily in Chicago’s South and Westside neighborhoods that focuses on small businesses owned by Black and Latino residents. Utilizing environmental portraits and photographs of interior spaces, my images highlight the economic and social contributions of small businesses in our underserved neighborhoods. Based on data collected by the city of Chicago for the new Citywide Plan, a clear disparity in business ownership exists across racial groups. Black residents are 29% of the population yet own only 4% of businesses. Latinos are 30% of the population and own just 9% of the businesses across the city. During my time making this work it became clear to me through conversations with business owners that building ownership was an important ingredient in creating more permanent establishments. The kinds of shops that become integrally woven into the fabric of the surrounding community very often do so because building ownership creates stability and longevity. This is how a donut shop in Roseland that opened in 1972 becomes so beloved that it still sells out its donuts every day or a soul food restaurant in Austin is a required campaign stop for almost every city, state and national politician. This project seeks to honor the businesses that do exist, their owners and the people who keep them running while also creating a social contract with the city of Chicago. Data has been collected, disparities have been identified, and communities have been consulted. Now work needs to be done.

Project funding provided by the Chicago Departments of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and Planning & Development as part of the Citywide Plan.

Jonathan Michael Castillo is a visual artist, photographer and educator based in Chicago whose projects focus on people, place and social issues. He was the 2019-2021 recipient of the Diane Dammeyer Fellowship in Photographic Arts and Social Issues. Jonathan was included in the 2021 Hyde Park Art Center's Ground Floor Biennial in Chicago and was a finalist for the WMA Commission in Hong Kong. His work has been featured with The New Yorker, Wired, The Chicago Tribune, CBS: Los Angeles, and Brazil's G1 Globo. He has appeared on the radio to discuss his photography on the BBC's “World Update” and local Los Angeles public radio programs KPCC and KCRW. Jonathan was recently commissioned to create a large-scale permanent installation of his work at O’Hare International Airport as part of the new Terminal 5 expansion project and separately commissioned to make work for the city of Chicago’s Citywide Plan. Exhibitions include those at the Art Institute Chicago, Photo LA 2020, the Center for Creative Photography, Aperture Gallery, House of Lucie, Filter Photo Gallery, Ralph Arnold Gallery and the California Museum of Art Thousand Oaks. Jonathan is represented by Samuel Maenhoudt Gallery in Belgium. His education includes a BFA from California State University Long Beach and MFA from Columbia College Chicago.

@joncastillophoto

Related Programming and Events

TBD

Bibliographical, nonsense #3: Paratextual Messages of the (UF)Os

work by olivier

August 3 – September 1, 2024

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, August 3rd
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of olivier’s solo exhibition - Bibliographical, nonsense #3: Paratextual Messages of the (UF)Os

S(H)ELF; {Neither;

—|

—| Index away— Write me off—

—| The exhausted object: Grants me, now!,

—| this contemplation pure of a language of the dawn. Rise, now!

—| 

—| 

^Previously in nonsense #2^ Started with the acceptance of a close encounter(...)ended in an encounter of self—a lack(-nessless) of self, but selves. (uh, oh)

—| 

Here comes nonsense #3. > Genette: “...Paradoxically, paratexts without texts do exist…” (Hmm…)

What is it to have a Borgesian way of navigating the originless shelves of Os in a UFO archive…all that are left are paratexts…where to next? how does the self move on? should one go on? The bookshelves have collapsed and the flying saucers will never land: We are living off from the (im)balance of pleasure and jouissance— Can this be a loss of a self among selves? Are selves scattered in the instant of ekstasis (1)? 

—|

Genette, again: (in an imaginary interview) “...the text interests me (only) in its textual transcendence— namely, everything that brings it into relation (manifest or hidden) with other texts. I call that transtextuality…”

v

trans(t)exuality…?

S( H )ELF; Nor}

1. (from Ancient Greek ἔκστασις) to stand outside of or transcend [oneself].

      Mysticism > Existentialism …. displacement…sourceless….

… (?self-annihilation?)

olivier is a research-based artist+writer and archives worker. They speak Cantonese at home with their demonic cat. 

Their practice is rooted in the ephemerality and the anarchival in queer and trans theory, and ufology. They toy with poetics and semiotics, caress languaging and linguistics, draw with speculative projects, artists’ books, videos, performative lectures, happenings, surveys… and lead a secret mail art practice.

olivier has lectured, performed, exhibited and published works in artist-run spaces, libraries, galleries and institutions in London, Hong Kong, New England, New York, Chicago, and perhaps your dream state. They are the founder of a speculative UFO archive project, The UFO Lobby (2021-). Some recent exhibitions and performative lectures include The Unreliable Narrator: I prefer not to be named (Chinese American Museum of Chicago), Would a Melancholic Time Traveller Time Travel?: A Study on Nostalgia and Melancholy Differences (Neighborhood Spaces, South Portland ME), UFO* *Not Cited (Poetry Foundation, Chicago IL), A Second Case Study: Informal Pterodactyl (Some reconsiderations of linguistic territories) (University of Illinois at Chicago), Archiving Edging: The edges of archives and to edge an archive (Duo show, Roots & Culture, Chicago IL), and UFO Citing: A Tribute for Lynn E. Catoe (Solo show, Portland ME). 

olivier holds an MA in Visual and Critical Studies, and a BFA in Painting and Art History. Born and raised in British-Hong Kong, they are now temporarily floating in the rivers of Chicago after some adventures in the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean. 

For the past decade, their time-machine has been stuck in this dimension. So it goes.

@xoliiviierx

Related Programming and Events

TBD

still, still

work by Maddie May

September 7 – 29, 2024

Saturday viewings, hosted by artist
12 – 2 P on Sept. 14, 21, and 28

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, September 7th
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of Maddie May’s solo exhibition - still, still

still, still is an exhibition amplifying the residues of life and the permanence of loss through multimedia works by Chicago-based artist Maddie May. Delving into intimate narratives embedded in everyday Midwestern household items, May explores themes of death, touch, time, and the quiet persistence of grief.

Central to the exhibition is May’s "Grief Towels" series, featuring hand-woven textiles that depict worn hand and dish towels that evoke touch, privacy, and intimacy, speaking of tenderness and the traces of life left behind after death. Also featured is May's newest project, "Memorial," an ongoing documentary publication cataloging items from Chicago-based community members related to those they have lost.

In still, still, works explore grieving processes, memory, legacy, and love through everyday objects.

Works in this exhibition were funded by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) Individual Artists Program.

Maddie May is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Growing up in a turbulent environment, May has lived in 26 houses, which instilled in them an investigative lens into relationships, everyday objects, and the spaces they inhabit. Their multi-sensory works magnify the emotional residue of Midwest lower-class households through textiles, sculpture, print, scent, and sound. Objects express intimacy, domesticity, turmoil, and discomfort, existing as characters that exemplify the physiological aftermath of abrasive events within the home. Influenced by childhood experiences and personal memories, May's work addresses cycles of trauma, addiction, grief, fear, and violence within the class-based systems of the United States. 

May holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design. They have exhibited at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), and Ruschwoman (Chicago, IL) to name a few. Recently, they held solo exhibitions at Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago, IL) and Wittenberg University (Springfield, OH). May received a City of Chicago DCASE Grant in 2023, was an artist in residence at The Residency Project (Pasadena, CA) in January 2024, and will be an artist in residence as a MASS MoCA fellow in December 2024.

@maddiemay.studio

Related Programming and Events

Saturday viewings, hosted by artist
12 – 2 P Sept. 14, 21, and 28

Memorial Book Release
Saturday, September 21st
2 – 3 p

Fear of Losing, Love of Having

work by Ray Madrigal

October 5 – 27, 2024

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, October 5th
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of Ray Madrigal’s solo exhibition - Fear of Losing, Love of Having

It becomes easy to forget how much we need each other.

Intercepted by the market, needs previously met through collaboration have now warped into an endless pursuit of independent preparedness. The dominant ethos is this: take care of your own. You don’t owe anyone anything. Protect your peace. We place our faith in a constant warding off of loss, traceable in the stuff of our surroundings. Abundance is guarded as stockpile.

Then there exists, alongside the kind of safety-making that decays social bonds, a softer method of survival that reinforces them. A sense – in certain queer and nonwhite and broke groups – of mutually generated security. An unpredictable, yet insistent, flow of crowdsourced rent relief; shared meals; clumsy good intentions; homemade air purifiers; the same $20 venmoed back and forth; herbal remedies; moving assistance; living room acupuncture; tenant unions; shared passwords; skin to skin contact… on and on.

Not the ostensibly eternal stability of a house in your name, but a safety conjured up moment to moment, spell-like. A space you might step inside and learn to recreate.

Fear of Losing, Love of Having probes our daily attempts at safety-making, dysfunctional and humane alike. The show is a material hypothesis of noticing as resistance, of slowness and widened eyes as crucial tools in the creation of gentler futures.

Rather than positing an answer, the works within hold up objects, moments, and efforts like flash cards, images connected to questions: How did this way of life come to be? Who decided it so? And how might we nudge our collective reality towards more humane, more loving methods of safety-making?

Ray Madrigal (b.1999, Sacramento, CA) is a third generation chicanx lesbian and maker in many mediums. Their work is concerned with worldly details, and how elements of the everyday might be studied to the benefit of vibrant queer survival. As a descendant of immigrant farm laborers, Madrigal strives to take nothing for granted in an increasingly unlikely life. 

Madrigal holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was named Home Depot Associate of the Month at store #6675 from October 2020 through February 2021. Their work has been featured by the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, and the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in Texas. They currently live, work, and play in Chicago, IL.

@raymadrigalmakes

Related Programming

Unpredictable, Yet Insistent: An Evening of Mutually Made Music

Sunday, October 20th
8 - 10 P

In conjunction with October’s featured exhibition, five music makers will spend an evening creating an unscripted soundscape. We invite you to step inside this softened space, one produced out of mutual intention and a possibility for trust – a living meditation on collaborative and intangible safety.

VAMP

work by D Rosen

November 2 – December 1, 2024

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, November 2nd
4 – 7 P

Join us in celebration of the opening of D Rosen’s solo exhibition - VAMP

Vampire Bats shed light on the ubiquity of queerness within human, animal, and more-than-human worlds. Reciprocal feeding is an armature that sustains clusters of Vampire Bat colonies. Queer behaviors include feeding, grooming, and same-sex pair bonding extending beyond normative kinship relations. 

States of survival are heavy cloaks under which queer and trans beings estranged from blood families often find ourselves exposed in daylight, burning. Yet Vampire Bats reciprocally feed fellow Bats with whom they are not directly genetically related. 

Blood is sustenance shared between
those not traditionally tethered by blood. 

A momentary red burst of fluid from one tongue to another. 

A blood transfusion; life support. 

Scientists were curious as to why Vampire Bats engage in such evolutionarily costly and potentially fatal behavior. Vampire Bats cannot survive for more than two days without food. Deepening the confusion, reciprocal feeding appears to bear no direct impact on an individual Bat’s familial or reproductive bloodline. 

To test their theories, scientists starved—to be painfully fair, the authors used the word fasted—Bats in labs to gain insights into the benefits of sharing. Is torture necessary to prove that love and sharing make the world survivable? Queer and trans people often survive exclusively through non-normative kinship and care among our fellow nightwalkers. 

We, VAMPS, feed together. 

A flaunting smile from the—reciprocally—undead.

The Bat biologist Dr. Merlin Tuttle stated that the greatest threat to Bat populations worldwide is human fear. Thousands of Bats are exterminated in a single blaze, burned alive in caves. Humans are afraid of Bats as mythical transmitters of rabies, when in fact, one is ten times more likely to contract rabies from a domesticated Dog than a Bat. 

Given the number of anti-trans bills over the last three years, I would argue that in the United States, like Bats, one of the greatest threats to the survival of queer and trans humans is human fear.

The transmissibility of zoonotic diseases quickly reminds humans how truly animal we are, how fragile we are, and how easily we may disappear. Yet, if the light is turned to highlight a gentler angle, we may see the beauty of interconnection outlined by our porous animal bodies. 

Animal is not a term of reduction. 

We, VAMPS, need community.

Hunger for touch that alights more care than contagion. 

—a cluster — a culture — 

—of less biting, more sharing, a respite—

Climate change rapidly impacts the migration patterns of Vampire Bats, flying mammals, who are moving further north as temperatures rise. Queer and trans people, especially QTBIPOC people, experience homelessness and housing instability at a higher rate than cis people. In the United States, there is an internal refugee crisis as trans people try to migrate from uninhabitable states. 

Abandoned iron mine shafts have become important homes for global Bat populations. Iron is in our mammalian blood; with hepcidin, Vampire Bats find balance. We, VAMPS, build homes together in elemental interstices. 

A chiaroscuro play of light and shadow on a planetary scale.

Vampire Bats are sanguivorous, feeding exclusively on blood. Various species of Bats play vital roles within our shared ecosystems, including in insect management, which is exacerbated by rising temperatures. Bats are also important pollinators. If you have ever eaten a banana, you have benefited from chiropterophily or the pollination of plants by Bats, along with many humans who are often underpaid and exploited. The violence of Western food systems could easily induce regurgitation. 

When the psychic pitch is too loud, VAMPS molt into a new form. 

We, VAMPS, keep learning to repurpose our peels.

A nightly disgorge of the false shadows

that cast monsters—

iron tongues, untangled

to sire a teething 

VAMP

we,

shape the lathes of reciprocity,

beyond species, 

beyond category, 

beyond blood.

D Rosen lives on the stolen and occupied lands of the Council of the Three Fires, known as Chicago, IL. They operate from the position that questions of animality are not binary but rather a tangle of ecologies and richly complicated identities framed by culture. Publications include “Gorgets: Trans Hummingbirds and Iridescent Echos,” Queering Nature, Antennae (2024); “Chrysanthemum Powder and Other Interspecies Scent Rituals,” Olfactory Art and the Political in an Age of Resistance, Routledge (2021); and “fashioning the undead,” A Trace of Fashioned Violence (2020). Exhibitions include Elemental Impressions of Interspecies Care, of Violence, ACRE Projects, Chicago (2024); Lunglike Shadows, Arnarhlíð 1, Reykjavík (2023); and In Spite of Enclosures, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; S12 and USF Verftet, Bergen, Norway; JOYA, Parque Natural Sierra María, Los Vélez, Spain; and HEIMA, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. Rosen received grants from The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (2021 and 2024), the IL Arts Council (2020), and the Nordic Summer University (2020). 

VAMP exhibition and programming were partially funded by a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), Individual Artists Program in 2024.

Thank you to all of the people and organizations who supported or helped bring this work into being, including: 

USF Verftet 
S12 
Firebird Community Arts 
Jason Raynard 
Andrew Bearnot 
Luin Joy Sherman
Kirien Eyma
Carlin Homes 
Kitty Rauth
Caitlin Wagner
Ruth K. Burke
Sonya Bernitz
Nadia John
Mel Cook
Levi Shand

Related Programming

BiG SiSSY (a)live

Friday, November 15th
Doors 8 p
Show 8:30 – 9:30 p

On a night where the strange and spectacular intertwine, BiG SiSSY takes the stage for BiG SiSSY (a)live—a performance weaving live original music, drag, and performance art. Presented in conjunction with D Rosen’s exhibition VAMP, exploring the queer and uncanny through the lens of vampire bats, the evening promises an intimate, raw exploration of identity and expression. Set against the backdrop of VAMP at Comfort Station, BiG SiSSY brings their singular energy and vision to create a space where sound, art, and performance meet the liminal and unknown.

Tracing Ways

work by E. Saffronia Downing and Rosemary Holliday Hall

December 7, 2024 – January 5, 2025

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 p

Opening Reception

Saturday, December 7th
4 – 7 p

Join us in celebration of the opening of E. Saffronia Downing and Rosemary Holliday Hall’s exhibition - Tracing Ways.

“Walking is how the body measures itself against the earth.”

– Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust 

Traces of movement, join and disperse– sneakers sink in soft soil, paw prints scamper across the sidewalk, paths of wood-boring beetles embroider a fallen tree. We mark our cohabitation as we criss-cross the continent. 

Tracing Ways, is a site-specific installation that draws attention to the tracks and traces of human and more-than-human cohabitants. Living on parallel coasts, collaborators Rosemary Holliday Hall and E. Saffronia Downing, convene at Comfort Station to weave together a collection of tracks gathered from their disparate environments. 

For these transient artists, Tracing Ways becomes a stopover, referencing Comfort Station’s history as a space for travelers to pause as they moved through the city. Using clay as a recording device, Downing and Hall capture and suspend the ever-flowing motion of beings against the earth.

E. Saffronia Downing is an artist and educator invested in craft processes, embodied research, and ecological thought. Downing forages local materials to create site-specific installations and sculptures. Downing received her MFA in ceramics from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. She has received fellowships from the College of the Atlantic (2023), Lunder Institute of American Art (2022), and Oxbow School of Art (2021). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Downing recently moved to Newburgh, New York. 

@_saffr0nia_

Rosemary Holliday Hall is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work engages visual arts and natural sciences. Her current projects  focus on entomology, transformation, and the history of materials to explore ecological entanglements. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of multiple fellowships, and collaborative grants some of which include Taft Botanical Gardens Artist Researcher in Residence, Ex.Change: Artist and Scientist on Climate Change, University of Chicago Art, Science & Culture collaboration Grant, Leroy Neiman Oxbow Fellowship, and the Maria and Jan Manetti Shrem Royal Drawing School Fellowship. Hall currently lives and works in Ojai, California.

@rosemaryhhall